Google Launches The Ultimate Jobs Killer

Gene Marks
, ContributorI write about technology developments for small business owners.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Yesterday I wasted four and a half hours of my time.

Three of those hours were spent watching the Eagles lose to the New York Giants. The remaining hour and a half was spent food shopping with my wife at our local supermarket. There will be enough people writing about the football game today. So let’s focus on the food shopping.

Which my wife and I hate with a passion. We have three teenage kids. We spend hundreds of dollars every Sunday purchasing chips, cereal, pizza bagels, frozen pretzels and the occasional banana and a roast chicken, all of which gets consumed no later than Wednesday. Which is when the complaints of “there’s never any food in this house” begin. To which one of us responds: “Then just order a pizza and leave me alone.” And before we know it, it’s Sunday again and the whole cycle begins once more.

Food shopping is one of the last remaining exercises in un-productivity left in this civilized world. You walk around the store, putting things in your cart. When you’re done putting things in your cart you then stand in line at the check out counter. Then you take everything out of your cart and put them on a conveyer belt so someone can run the items through a scanner. Then another person takes those items and puts them back into your cart, this time in bags (I often do the bagging myself, but for some reason my local Acme employs people who frequently battle with me for this opportunity). After you pay, you then wheel the cart to your 2004 Honda Odyssey with 105,988 miles on it (please God let it last two more years) and put the bags in your car. Then you drive home. Then you carry the bags into the house. Then you yell at your teenage kids to help you put the stuff away. Which they do. Grudgingly. And then you empty all the bags and put the stuff you bought on your shelves or in your fridge.

What a waste of time. What a waste of manpower. Google, can you once again come to our rescue with some type of groundbreaking technology that will change all of this? Oh, you have? And it’s called Google Wallet? And you just launched it last week? And it will not only save me (the tired consumer) time, but it will help me (the tired small business owner) eliminate lots of unproductive jobs too? Perfect!

The above chart shows how productive American businesses have become since the last recession. They are getting more done, and generating more profits, with less people. Google Wallet will make this even more pronounced. It will change the way small businesses and retailers do business. It will make them more profitable. It will eliminate many, many jobs.

People view it as a payment tool. Which, of course, it is. Instead of whipping out a credit card, users of Google Wallet will launch the little app on their mobile device, enter in a password and then tap the device against a reader-type machine. The machine, using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology (or something like that in the future) will transact the payment with your device, communicating with your credit card company (Visa, Mastercard, Citi...they’ve all signed on), approving the payment and e-mailing receipts and documentation to all parties involved.

Gizmodo's Matt Buchanan admits that for now, Google Wallet is a novelty. “But not for long. Wallet will fix a lot of things, perhaps sooner than you'd expect, even given how slow as the financial industry moves. But eventually it's going to wash over everything like a wave. It'll be on lots of phones. It'll work with lots of cards and lots of banks. It'll be in lots of stores. And then it'll be just as natural as pulling out a card and swiping. Maybe more, since I have my phone out all the time anyway. Besides, it's obvious this is just the beginning for Google. Google doesn't just want to replace your credit cards—there's a reason they're calling it Google Wallet, not Google Money or Google Cards.”

Some think Google Wallet will be attractive to small business owners and retailers because they can offer special discounts and coupons, redeemable only through the use of Google Wallet. And that they can better track sales and customer activities. And that they can offer loyalty and other programs to keep their customers coming back to their shops. And that fraudulent transactions can be more easily discovered.